Take Out Student Loans and There is No Rebound in Consumer Credit Since the Great Recession Ended

How important are student loans to overall consumer credit growth?
The next chart below shows total consumer credit in the top panel (the
series that gets reported and analyzed), student loans in the middle
panel (same series as in the chart above) and consumer credit less
student loans in the bottom panel.
Take out government-owned student loans and there has been virtually
no rebound in consumer credit since the Great Recession ended. Restated,
the consumer has not been borrowing since the Great Recession has
ended. Rather, students took advantage of below-market rates on loans
provided by the government starting in 2009.

What happens to these student loans next? From the story above:

The rate on student loans is set to
double on July 1 without action by Congress. The rate increase would
affect about 7.4 million students, according to the White House, adding
an average of $1,000 a year in payments on college loans.

President Barack Obama last week sought
to keep pressure on Congress to freeze the interest rate on federally
subsidized student loans, saying a higher education can’t be an
unaffordable luxury for middle-income Americans.

Some economists were concerned the jump in educational lending reflected a poor job market.

“Most of the improvement in credit is a
function of the explosion student loan debt,” said Neil Dutta, an
economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. “The reason student loan
debt is exploding? Because the youth population is having difficulty
finding work. Hardly a good reason for credit extension.”